ECONOMIC FREEDOM in South Africa deteriorates rapidly. The country has tumbled 12 places and is now firmly embedded in the bottom half of the 162 countries and territories evaluated in the Economic Freedom of the World: 2018 Annual Report. This report by the Fraser Institute confirmed SA’s decline from position 82 to 94 due to anti-freedom policies and practices.

In 2003 SA almost made it into the most-free quartile ranking gaining position 45. Now the country is a 3rd quartile fixture, being three consecutive years in the bottom half.

The Economic Freedom of the World Report is the world’s premier measurement of economic freedom, evaluating and ranking countries in five areas: size of government, legal structure and security of property rights, access to sound money, freedom to trade internationally and regulation of credit, labour and business. (See full report).

The heated debate between proponents of property protection and those in favour of confiscation (expropriation without compensation) has been characterised by a lack of data and waged mainly on ideological and emotional arguments. The lack of an acceptable factual basis is evident in:

Government, AgriSA and Afriforum operating with different figures for categorising land ownership according to race;

The number of farms on the list for the first round of expropriation. (If there was such a list).

Uncertainty about the number of recipients of free subsidy houses (where transfer of title has not taken place) and how these properties should be counted.

Arguments that expropriation would kill the economy simply being countered with promises that the economy would not be harmed.

At the public consultations the facts applied were almost always derived from (and limited to) local situations and narratives with no or little attention to systemic information. EOSA therefore analysed last year’s WEF’s Global Competitiveness Index (as part of our enterprise research on relevant data and statistics) to assess whether there are some global indicators to inform the debate. Several significant correlations are evident from the WEF data: